First Contact On An Alien World When we talk about life on other worlds, what kind of life could it be, what could it be based on? Can you imagine we get to a planet which has intelligent life and we land our ship and get out trying to make contact and a giant intelligent roach comes out to meet us? We have to be ready for anything no matter how revolting it might seem to us. Some scientists say this could never happen. They claim insects could never evolve to the point they have the same intelligence or better than us. They claim they are just not equipped to be able to evolve into that. I don’t believe this, after all the same scientists will tell you we evolved from a single cell organism. We have been surprised about ant intelligence in the past and finding out they could farm for their food must have been a real shock. They seem far more capable than their brains would allow. I think the next thing we have to look at is the possibility of aquatic intelligent life. We are finding out there is far more water on exoplanets than we first thought. If it turns out water is common and there are billions upon billions of planets in just our galaxy alone, it seems there is a good chance some of it could be intelligent. Some people think dolphins might be as intelligent as us, but we just have no way to prove it unless we can figure out their language, if that is what it is. Even though dolphins live in the water they are not fish, but mammals and are warm blooded and have mammary glands. There are other animals which live in the water which are very intelligent even though they haven’t reached the stage of human intelligence. An example of this is an octopus. It is neither a fish or mammal, but an invertebrate animal. In other words, it is an animal without a spine. Many times, over they have demonstrated their intelligence. One of my favorite octopus stories is about an octopus which was in a tank at an aquarium. He patiently looked things over and noticed there was a pipe on the other end of the room and somehow figured out it led to the ocean. One night he climbed out of his tank and into that pipe and escaped. Since he had no spine, he was able to fit quite nicely into the pipe. The planning for the escape took brain power and amazed everyone who was involved with the aquarium. Is it possible our first contact on an extraterrestrial water world will be an evolved octopus who is as smart or smarter than us? There are other animals in the sea which also are smart such as the Sea otter which uses tools to open abalones. It gets a rock and lays on its back in the water with the abalone on its stomach and hits it with the rock until it can get the food. Other candidates are Killer whales and even penguins. We have to remember these are all earth animals and the forms of life on an alien world could be completely different. Moving on to land we have a large assortment of animals, but how many of them could eventually evolve into intelligent creatures? Most people think the Monitor Lizard is the most intelligent of the reptiles. How do we know they are smart? They have been observed counting snails and seem to have distinct personalities. For lizard intelligence this is a big deal. Could we encounter a reptilian form of intelligent life when we explore that alien planet? Some say we have already been visited by intelligent reptiles and they go on to say they don’t like us. As we know there is quite an assortment of animals living on the planet. Many of us know about Koko. Koko was a gorilla which learned how to communicate with us using sign language. She even went online with a sign language translator and allowed us to ask her questions. There is no denying she was super intelligent, but not as smart as us. Today many scientists consider the Orangutan to be the smartest of all animals. I don’t mean to laugh, but imagine our ship landing again on an alien planet which was like planet of the apes. I wonder how the astronauts would feel about that. Scientists were amazed when they saw Orangutans using tools in their endeavors. The use of tools is considered a sign of intelligence, but so is solving problems. That is where the Raven and Crow come in. Their intelligence while not equal to ours is truly amazing. Some of the experiments they were subject to, proved this beyond a doubt. One experiment which I have mentioned before, put a crow in a cage with a paperclip, a metal tube and a thimble with a handle at the bottom of the tube. The thimble was filled with bird seed but was too low in the tube for the crow to reach it. Scientists could not believe what the crow did next. It looked the situation over and realized it could not reach the seeds. It went over to the paper clip and bent it into a hook. Next it lowered the hook into the tube and slid the hook under the handle on the thimble and pulled the thimble out and ate the seeds. This was so incredible it left the scientists totally amazed. They realized the crow was far smarter than first thought. It was also found crows can remember faces and if a crow sees someone who threatened another crow, it will never forget and will warn the other crows when they see that person. Perhaps when we land on that alien world an even more intelligent crow type individual will come out to greet us. On the other hand, we might meet up with something which looks so repulsive to us we might lose our lunch. It could turn out this is the way we look to an alien. We might land our ship and find the occupants of this extraterrestrial world all have several heads, tentacles for arms, and slither along the ground leaving a slime trail. I think as we travel further into space our astronauts should be trained on how to react in these situations. We certainly do not want to blow first contact by making a bad impression when we land on someone else’s planet.
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